San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Hagrid in Harry Potter films gained legions of young fans
Robbie Coltrane, the veteran Scottish actor who played the beloved half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” films and starred in the cult British crime series “Cracker,” died Friday in Larbert, Scotland. He was 72.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Belinda Wright, his British agent. Wright said that Coltrane’s family had not disclosed a cause but that he had been “unwell for some time.”
Coltrane veered from the comic to the gritty in a 40-year career in film and television, with turns as an antihero detective in “Cracker” (199396), a KGB agent turned ally to James Bond and a gangster who disguises himself as a nun after betraying his fellow criminals in “Nuns on the Run” (1990).
But those roles did little to prepare Coltrane to play Hagrid, a fan favorite from the “Harry Potter” books whose transition to the big screen would face the sky-high expectations of millions of young readers.
Coltrane successfully embodied the 8-foot-6 half-giant. He appeared in all eight “Harry Potter” films, infusing the franchise with warmth even as he towered over the young witches and wizards at the center of the series who were embroiled in a fight against evil.
The first film, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” opened in November 2001 and went on to gross more than $1 billion worldwide, building on the already fervent global fan base of J.K. Rowling’s book series.
Wright, Coltrane’s agent of 40 years, said the role was the reason he received a “stream of fan letters every week for over 20 years.”
Fiercely protective of his privacy, Coltrane gave few interviews and could be hard-edged with reporters. But he said he had to cast that gruffness aside when he was embraced by a legion of young “Harry Potter” fans.
“Kids come up to you, and they go, ‘Would you like to sign my book?’ with those big doeeyes,” he told The Guardian in 2012. “And it’s a serious responsibility.”
Coltrane was born Anthony
Robert McMillan on March 30, 1950, in Rutherglen, Scotland, outside Glasgow. His father, Ian Baxter McMillan, was a doctor; his mother, Jean Ross Howie, was a teacher.
He grew up on the outskirts of Glasgow and enrolled in Glasgow School of Art, where he studied drawing and painting but struggled to capture his ideas on canvas.
“I wanted to paint like the painters who really moved me, who made me want to weep about humanity,” he told the Herald, a Scottish newspaper, in 2014. “Titian. Rembrandt. But I looked at my diploma show and felt a terrible disappointment when I realized all the things that were in my head were not on the canvas.”
As the prospect of a future as a painter dimmed, he was encouraged by a drama teacher who told him that he had acting talent after he appeared in a staging of Harold Pinter’s one-act play “The Dumb Waiter,” the Herald reported.
After adopting his stage name as a tribute to great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, Coltrane found steadier footing when he moved to London. He worked as a stand-up comedian and actor, picking up theater roles and small parts in television and film productions.
He attracted critical acclaim as Dr. Edward Fitzgerald, known as Fitz, the chainsmoking criminal psychologist in the hit series “Cracker,” whose alcohol addiction echoed Coltrane’s own issues with drinking. The role earned him the BAFTA award for best TV actor in 1994, 1995 and 1996.
A turn as Valentin Zukovsky, a former KGB agent turned Russian mafia kingpin, in the James Bond films “GoldenEye” (1995) and “The World is Not Enough” (1999) exposed Coltrane to a broader audience, particularly in the United States.
There was nothing, however, that could compete with the global fame he found after he was cast as Rubeus Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” series. With his bushy beard and growling voice, Coltrane brought the beloved character to life.
The young actors who grew up on the sets of the “Harry Potter” films fondly remembered Coltrane as someone they could count on to lift their spirits with a joke or a word of encouragement.
Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, said Friday that Coltrane “used to keep us laughing constantly as kids.”
“I’ve especially fond memories of him keeping our spirits up on ‘Prisoner of Azkaban,’” Radcliffe said in a statement, “when we were all hiding from the torrential rain for hours in Hagrid’s hut and he was telling stories and cracking jokes to keep morale up.”
James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley in the series, wrote on Twitter that when he was 14 years old and nervous on his first day on the set, Coltrane came over and said, “Enjoy it; you’ll be great.”Coltrane is survived by his children, Spencer and Alice, and a sister, Annie Rae.
In the HBO Max retrospective “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts,” which premiered Jan. 1, Coltrane reflected on the role that introduced him to a new generation of fans.
“The legacy of the movies is that my children’s generation will show them to their children,” he said. “So you could be watching it in 50 years’ time, easy. I’ll not be here, sadly, but Hagrid will, yes.”